For Posteriority

I sit and write this on Monday morning as the stock markets have opened to plummeting values, and supermarket shelves everywhere are empty of soap and… toilet roll??? Really? Of course, it’ll be the poor that suffer as they can’t stockpile, not having enough money, nor SUVs to drive it all home and fill the garage.
But looking back to Sunday, there were several hours out lifting moorings in delightful company… AndyG (Norman Andrews Jnr being his crooner stage name), Mark, Dan and newbie Dougal. And in fine sunshine though with a wind so brisk that NA Jnr’s BLT blew across the yard, poor fellow. And then a visit to the daughter and a viewing of Scotland crushing France. If only we could play against 14 men all the time. Or Italy.
So, to this crisis. Self-fulfilling crisis. I could be totally wrong of course and you’ll be looking back at this after my death from Covid19, but I’ve got to agree with Simon Jenkins, so I’ll leave his thoughts here for posterity. Goodbye cruel world! 

When hysteria is rife, we might try some history. In 1997 we were told that bird flu could kill millions worldwide. Thankfully, it did not.In 1999 European Union scientists warned that BSE "could kill 500,000 people". In total, 177 Britons died of vCJD. The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported by as having "a 25% chance of killings tens of millions" and being "worse than Aids". In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared "the first pandemic of the 21st century", the scares in 2003, 2004 and 2005 having failed to meet their body counts.
Then, in 2009, pigs replaced birds. The BBC announced that swine flu "could really explode". The chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, declared that "65,000 could die". He spent £560m on a Tamiflu and Relenza stockpile, which soon deteriorated. The Council of Europe’s health committee chairman described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as "one of the great medical scandals of the century". These scenarios could have all come to pass of course – but they represent the direr end of the scale of predictions. Should public life really be conducted on a worst-case basis?